I didn't write the story below. It was written by F. Sionil Jose and sent to me by my prolific cyberspace friend, Ed Navarra. When I read it, I said to myself, "This must be shared with my Barako readers.

I wrote this note to Ed:

"Ed, thanks. I am going to lift this and
install it in my next Kapeng Barako column. It's so profoundly written
and everything he said here is all so true. I think It will also get a
prominent space in my next book.

At lunch the other day, the cultural activist and stage star Joy Virata asked two very important questions. I
have mulled over them for so long, I think I have some of the answers,
most of which are based on our history, our nature as Filipinos and our
economic system. I am only too aware, of course, of the Marxist
injunction that this economic system itself determines our culture.

I’m
pushing on to 90 — Ms. Virata must have considered this when she asked,
is there any difference between politics of yesteryear and today?

And the other more telling question is, why we have declined morally, why we are so corrupt.

Being
this ancient, I must be forgiven for my nostalgia and tenacious
clinging to a past that has been enhanced by a little knowledge of
history. I remember what the historian William Henry Scott told me —
how he came across an inventory in the 1896 revolution listing down
broken pens, old
chairs, the trivia put down by outgoing bureaucrats illustrating their
honesty.

In
the Thirties, politicians spent their own money for their election
campaign. Many of them were impoverished by their aspiration to be town
mayor, congressman or governor. Not now — politicians make money at the
very beginning when they campaign. How did they go about then?

I
fondly remember the former Secretary of Health, Dr. Juan Salcedo, going
to Pangasinan in anon- airconditionedPantranco bus, Cabinet
Secretaries Conrado Estrella and Emmanuel Pelaez travelling without any
escort, Senator Juan Flavier using public transport. Not the officials
today — from the simple city mayor who goes around with a fleet of
security vehicles.
Look at the composition of the Senate in the Fifties — they were
intellectuals, writers, Recto, Tanada, Pelaez, Manglapus and so on. Yes,
there was one movie star — Rogelio de la Rosa but he was circumspect,
competent enough to be ambassador, too.

Look at Senators today, and weep.

Yes,
indeed, how can any Filipino today escape this plague that has drained
us of courage to fight it, that has rendered us apathetic and
submissive?

Corruption
now pervades our very lives. We see it in the conduct of our highest
elected officials, our police officers, in the justice system that is in
shambles. After all that pork barrel noise in Congress, why is no one
in jail? The Ampatuan massacre — why, after four years, there is no
court verdict? The daily murders —many of them are unreported. And the
public apathy and cynicism:

I
have an explanation, which I know is incomplete for there are iron
realities that aggravate the Filipino metastasis — the poverty which has
forced so many to steal, the hypocrisy inherent in Filipino
relationships, our pakikisama, wherein we don’t ostracize the corrupt
but instead greet them with handshakes and smiles. Our cowardice even —
all these basically obstruct the creation of a
just society.

But first, the trauma of history.

It
is quite correct to ascribe so many evils in our society as accruements
of a colonial past. We must bear in mind though that the colonialists
are gone, that though vestiges of colonialism remain, as the Spanish
writer Salvador de Madariaga stated, a country need not be colonized by a
foreign power — it can well be a colony of its own elites and leaders.
And this is what we have become.

The
past hundred years or so have sorely tested us as a people aspiring to
be a nation. In 1896 after the execution of Jose Rizal by the Spaniards,
the revolution broke out only to be sold out by a weakened leadership
in the Pact of Biak na Bato. That struggle was resuscitated when the
Americans came in 1898. We fought them, too, but the ragtag
revolutionary Army was beaten and we became an American colony.

In
both wars, our patriotism, our unity as a people were tested on the
battlefield, our morale succumbed but far more demeaning was the moral
decay.

In
that period when Filipino leadership was under siege, Apolinario Mabini
provided it with a stern moral leadership. This was his singular role,
but his voice was not heeded by no less than the president, General
Emilio Aguinaldo, who was surrounded by the rich ilustrados.They wanted
Mabini’s influence totally banished, so that they could enrich
themselves and negotiate with the new imperialists.

We
see then from the very beginning of the Malolos Republic this fatal
virus that afflicts us — the acceptance of collaboration with the enemy
for personal gain.

It
was the same when the second trauma ravaged us — the Japanese invasion
in 1942 and the brutal three-year occupation. So many Filipinos
collaborated with them, some out of sincere belief that they would
relieve Asia from Western colonialism, but most, simply to preserve
their privileged status and profit from collaboration.

How
was collaboration with the Nazis in Europe in World War II resolved?
The Danes started killing the collaborators even before the collapse of
Nazi Germany. The French hounded them, jailed them.

In
the Philippines, many of them even proclaimed themselves patriots. They
were granted amnesty. As a political issue, therefore, collaboration
with the Japanese was settled but it continues to fester today as a
moral issue.

Were the collaborators ever bothered? Hardly, I think, because they know we are not bound by moral scruples.

Then martial law. So many of us knew it was coming and some even welcomed it. As for the very poor, the masa —
it was not their real concern. As one put it, he didn’t care if it was the devil himself who ruled as long as food was cheap.

Again,
many Filipinos accepted the edict; they even worked gladly for Marcos,
legitimized his regime and willfully contributed to the violence, the
death, imprisonment and torture of thousands.

In
all these three traumatic events in our history, the collaborators with
our exploiters were never really punished. They ended up rich, and
successfully masqueraded as heroes. The evil that imperialists and
Marcos did was soon forgotten.
We see now the Marcoses and so many of their hirelings back in power,
sneering at our credulity.

What then does history tell us?

In
these man-made disasters that wrought havoc on otherwise stable and
just societies, the rules of conduct, of ethics were thrown out of the
window as the powerful dictator, king, bureaucrat, imperial agent
exploited the people and the land. Each individual must survive; he
becomes an animal in the jungle; he gets used to the violence, the
corruption, the lying and the cheating as normal human traits; he adapts
to them, even exploits
them if he can. Forget truth, God, the wrath of the heavens — there is
only he and his family.

In
this decadent atmosphere, it is difficult to recover virtue. And if the
disaster strikes again after it is surmounted, the individual is
immersed deeper into the slime so that eventually, he is totally
submerged in it, he no longer knows what it feels to breathe the fresh
air, to appreciate green living things, to know God and the infinite
splendor of creation. He knows only the fetid darkness.

Today,
for
all hosannas evoked by the seeming development in the economy, we need
to think not of the future, but of the past which impacts on today.

There
is one great failing of government, from Cory’s to her son’s which is
not lost on the national consciousness — and this is the resolution of
the assassination of Ninoy Aquino. No one seriously believes that those
soldiers who were imprisoned for the crime were the real perpetrators.
Someone upstairs, powerful and well connected masterminded it all, as
well as the cover-up murders of several people who were supposed to be
in the know.

What
our leaders do not realize is the gravity of the murder of Ninoy
Aquino, not so much because of the man’s political ambition, but the
perception today that murder has become so common — a daily occurrence
as blatantly evidenced in the newspapers but that this government — the
whole justice system — is so rotten it cannot even resolve such a high
profile murder case wherein it should not be difficult to target the
perpetrator.

Such
a crime — without being fully resolved — contributes to the apathy of
people, their acceptance of crime as the last nail in the coffin of the
Filipino dream.

The
assassination of Ninoy is not just a domestic crime — it is known all
over the world, it is blot on the image of the Filipino nation as it
illustrates to the whole world the rottenness of the Filipino justice
system. If there is no justice for Ninoy Aquino, how can there be
justice for poor, anonymous Juan? If President PNoy knows, he does not
say — which is, of course, the most damning of all because he is the
son.

What
aggravates our moral decay is our very nature, our sociability and
hypocrisy. Although we are familiar with the crimes of our leaders,
we continue to fete them, invite them in social functions, often bonded
as they are with us not just by social ties but by gratitude for what
these politicians must have done for us. Then, of course, there is this
economic system which is propelled by consumerism and untrammeled greed.

The last question: Is there no hope for Filipinos then?

The
answer is with our youth. I always tell them, our heroes who wrote our
history with their blood were all very young, in their twenties and
thirties. For sure, many of the ilustrados
joined the revolution for themselves. But Rizal, Mabini, Bonifacio and
so many others did not.

And
we are a talented people, as illustrated no less by Rizal. No country
in Asia has ever produced a man like him. When we celebrate his birthday
next week, just remember, he was a novelist, a sculptor, a medical
doctor, a scholar, a teacher and a martyr at 35 when the Spaniards
executed him.